


Stay Out Of The Light

by dear_monday



Series: Another Knife In My Hands [2]
Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-14
Updated: 2012-07-14
Packaged: 2017-11-09 22:46:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/459343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dear_monday/pseuds/dear_monday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, bad things happen to good people. Sometimes, good things happen to bad people who tear lives apart without a second thought because they're greedy and selfish and careless, leaving trails of shit in their wake. It's fucking disgusting.</p>
<p>So, sometimes, Frank happens to bad people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stay Out Of The Light

**Author's Note:**

> **additional warning for character death (suicide) prior to start of fic.**

Sometimes, bad things happen to good people. Sometimes, good things happen to bad people who tear lives apart without a second thought because they're greedy and selfish and careless, leaving trails of shit in their wake. It's fucking disgusting.

So, sometimes, Frank happens to bad people.

The day that opens his eyes is the day they bury his best friend. Frank stands there with the rain soaking through his Sunday best while he watches them lower Gerard's body into the ground, thinking about all the people who made Gerard's life a living hell. All the kids who laughed at him and left him out, all the teachers who told him he'd never be good enough, all the girls who stood him up, all the agencies who turned him down, all the doctors who just forced more pills down his throat instead of _listening_. Suicide, Frank thinks. Suicide, my ass. They murdered him, every last one of them. One of the best people Frank's ever known is lying cold and stiff in a wooden box because people are weak and stupid and small. People are _shit_.

Frank isn't a killer, he's an exterminator. Bit by bit, he's stripping the sickening, ugly parts out of humanity - the parts no one would miss. The filth, the shit, the poison. It's a dirty job, but no one else is going to do it. No one else has the guts.

It takes him some time to get it right, just like the first guitar he tried wasn't the one that really sang for him. The crowbar is good, leaves him with the taint of the slaughterhouse clinging to his skin like a lover, but it feels too primitive. It makes him feel like he's part of what he's fighting. His bare hands are good, too - there's nothing like the feel of a man's windpipe yielding under his fingers and the rattle of their last breaths - but he's not an idiot. Going unarmed is asking for trouble. He's no good to anyone if he bleeds out in some filthy back alley because he was too stupid to take a weapon.

Knives, though - knives are _perfect_. He knows the instant he picks one up, feels the weight of it in his hand, watches light slide over the blade. There's something blackened and bitter that writhes and kicks and seethes inside him, but when he tests the blade against his fingertip, it purrs. The next day, he goes into the tattoo parlor and leaves again with new ink looped around his hips. _Search And Destroy_ , it reads. It aches and throbs, keeping him awake that night, but the pain is worth it. It's a promise to himself, to Gerard. This is a war, and Frank is a soldier.

He picks his kills carefully, flitting from town to town. The day he knowingly kills an innocent will be the day he puts a gun in his own mouth, because that would make him no better than the worthless scum he preys on. He gets good at watching, at making himself inconspicuous and searching for the signs, and he always, _always_ waits until he's sure. He tests people for dirty secrets tucked into fault lines like kids tap at walls to find the hollow places. It's surprisingly easy. People are so malleable, going soft in Frank's hands and spilling their confessions over his fingers with just the gentlest push in the right direction. Secrets like nothing better than to be told. Of course, some of them don't have much to hide, so Frank lets them go. He's not some kind of crazed psycho, no matter what the newspapers think.

There's a kind of brutal, bloody poetry to it, he thinks, to a throat slit from left to right and the desperate drag of a last breath. There's blood, of course, _so_ much blood - spilling and dripping and bubbling, staining Frank's hands. It sinks into the whorls and grooves of his fingertips and lingers even when he's cleaning himself up afterwards in whichever tiny apartment he's renting this time. The scenes he leaves in the bathrooms remind him of the scenes Gerard used to draw, splattered with red ink and frustrated ambition. Whenever Frank wavers from his course, he thinks of Gerard and all the things he could have been. Frank is fighting for him, for everyone like him. Frank's under no illusions - there are too many people who don't deserve to live, more than he could ever possibly hope to track down and eliminate. Maybe he'll be caught one day, and that'll be the end of what good he can do.

But in the meantime, he's going to exterminate as much of the fucking vermin as he can.


End file.
